edited March 2014 in General Discussion
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Hey fellow Ork-addicts. I'm looking for advice on how to make my game, "Batman Versus the Martians", better. I've gotten to a point now where I'm stepping back and contemplating it, and I've gotten a lot of things scripted that I never thought I would figure out. But I'm really not happy with the combat, and I was hoping by sharing it with my fellow game developers, I might get some feedback on how to make it better.

I've posted a video below of the game. Yes, the game stars Batman, and yes, I know this is someone else's property. I just can't help it -- I want to make a Batman game. :) It's my first game, and I'm using old sprites from the SNES and Genesis.

I'm using Ork's Real Time Combat engine, but I'm not sure where to go now. Obviously, the collisions aren't great, and the attacking is spamming. It might have been a strange choice to use an RPG script for a beat em up. But I wanted it to have a lot of RPG elements, so, I decided to do this.

If you could, take a look at the video and see what I'm doing here, and let me know what u think. I want to make the battling more dynamic and nuanced, but I'm not sure how. Any kind of feedback would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.



  • Well, for Beat 'em ups the first major omission I'm seeing here is a lack of knock-back with attacks. If you're really intent on making a brawler, I'd go watch or play some classic games (Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Double Dragon, Turtles In Time, etc) and keep a checklist, taking lots of notes of how exactly they handle their interface, how combat feels, etc.

    Then go over it and compare and contrast to your current alpha; and see what needs to be improved. Making an actiony real-time battle system with ORK is definitely possible, but to make it feel good will require a lot of extra work, tweaking and scripting outside of ORK.
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  • yeah, you're right, it's about making it feel GOOD, which i haven't accomplished yet. I've got it up and running, which I have to admit, I wasn't sure I'd be able to do, but now I'm moving on to the next step of tweaking. I think the first thing I need to do is slow it down.

    The other thing is, I'm considering redoing it in 3D, and in tandem with that, coming up with my own hero.... fan games can lead to a lot of trouble, and if I'm going to be spending this much time with it, I want to distribute it how I want.

    Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.
  • I think you would need to limit how fast/how many times you can act to avoid it being button spam. Maybe you want some sort of stamina gauge to allow how many actions. See Star Ocean 3.


    Have you seen any 2D Tales games like Tales of Destiny Remake(for PS2)?



  • that's a good idea, I actually hadn't really considered attacking consuming something. I think if I slowed it down a little as well as added a gauge that regulated that, I would have something a little better.

    I've played some of the more recent Tales games, but only as old as Vesperia. But it's the same basic concept I think. Either way, that would cut down on spamming.

    Thanks for taking the time to check it out and comment. I appreciate it.
  • The most important missing element might be hitstun to make combos possible. Depending on how you have things set up, maybe you could add a simple Stun status effect that prevents all actions and wears off after some amount of time, then make all attacks inflict that status effect.

    From there, just add at least one of a few things:
    1) weroth's suggestion of a limited number of attacks before the player has a forced cooldown period
    2) Natural attack lag time from animations playing out their cycle (you'd need longer animations for this)
    3) The enemy gets knocked down after X attacks and becomes temporarily invincible while getting up

    Then I'd say you'd have a solid foundation.
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  • yeah, slowing down the combat is definitely where to go. I hadn't considered combos, that's a good idea... a couple punches leading to a stun and opening up the enemy to better attacks would be pretty cool. taking advantage of Ork's status effects is definitely something I should do.

    and you're right about the lag time with the animations. I don't have more frames, but I can slow down the playing of them.

    Knocking down the enemy after a number of attacks is a great idea too. That's classic beat em up and I totally forgot about it!

    Thanks for the help!
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